by Jenna Kernan
“This way,” said Rylee.
Jackson hesitated. “If they come through the side door, they’ll come through one at a time and we’ll have a clear shot.”
But their pursuers didn’t choose the opening through which they had entered. The sound of their bullet punching through the metal garage door before them and the sound of men shouting confirmed that. Rylee’s decision to move became more urgent.
“They’re destroying the garage lock,” said Jackson.
“That’s Wayne Faith,” said Rylee. “I’m certain.”
Rylee led them with her phone through the cavernous structure, past two boats in dry dock stacked one above the other on metal scaffolding. Beside them sat empty racks and a winch. Construction equipment, including a Bobcat and a backhoe, completed the vehicles. They’d never get out of here in either one, Rylee knew.
At the front corner, beside the door, Rylee noticed a framed office with large glass windows reflecting her light back at them.
“That’s just where I’d look for us.” Jackson paused, searching their surroundings. “What about those stacked boats?”
“You want to hide in one of those wooden bottomed boats?” asked Rylee. It was the kind of choice that left no option.
“It’s cover. Hard to reach. A tower, easier to defend.”
“Depends on how much ammo we have. And how much time we have to hold them,” said Rylee.
“You walked right by those boats. They might as well. And it would put us behind them. We might be able to slip past them and to their vehicle.”
“We can’t slip out of those boats,” said Rylee. “The bottom one is ten feet off the ground. The scaffold is metal. We won’t be quiet on descent and they have semiautomatic weapons.”
“Your alternative?” asked Jackson.
She had none, except the mission. “We need to find the suspect. It’s the only proof that this congregation is involved.”
“Shooting at us should be proof enough,” said Jackson.
“Let’s go out the back.” Before them were two more large garage doors and a small door to the right.
Jackson glanced toward the rear exit. “No cover. Nothing out there but the seawall and water. Plus, any men that may have come around to block that way out.”
“It’s dark outside. We might get past them or get out before they block us in.”
Jackson gave her a dubious look, but nodded.
Behind them, the front garage door inched upward.
At the back door, Rylee flicked her phone to mute as a reply came in from her supervisor. Then she tucked away her mobile. Jackson called to her in a whisper.
“Help coming?” she asked.
Rylee nodded.
“Look.” Jackson pointed to the narrow window flanking the back entrance. “At the boats.”
Two of the trucks had peeled off and their occupants were now disembarking from their vehicles. They headed under the floodlight and straight for the boat with the red hull.
“They must have seen us come in here,” said Jackson.
Rylee nodded. “So what are they after over there?”
She knew the answer before she saw two men haul the small dark-haired figure from the wheelhouse of the boat.
Their suspect was getting away.
Behind them came the sound of their pursuers, now inside the garage.
* * *
FOR THE PAST ninety minutes, Axel had tried and failed to reach Rylee. He had stopped at her motel, called and left messages. With each passing minute, he grew more certain that she was at the compound. He was on his way there when his mobile phone chimed, alerting him to an incoming text message.
He stared at the glowing screen and the message from Rylee. 10-33 Shooting.
He had his SUV turned in the direction of the address listed, an address he did not know. That troubled him. GPS in his sheriff’s unit showed a small private quay on the river road near the Congregation of Eternal Wisdom. Axel started to sweat as he depressed the accelerator, exceeding the speed limit on the winding road.
A 10-33 was a call for immediate help.
When he spoke, it was to the empty car’s interior. “If anything happens to her, I’ll...” Be lost, he thought.
Because he loved her.
Why did it take this, gunfire and the possibility of losing her forever, for him to realize that keeping her safe was more important that keeping his secrets?
Axel made one phone call en route. One to his trusted friend Kurt Rogers.
“She called you?” asked Rogers.
“Text. They are pinned down at the wharf.”
“What wharf?”
Axel gave him the location.
“Rylee says there are a three lobster boats moored beyond the congregation walls on the river.”
“Theirs?”
“She says so.”
“What’s your plan?”
“I’m going in and getting them out,” said Axel.
“Sounds good.”
“Call Sorrel Vasta. Ask for boats. I don’t want them getting the DHS suspect over to the Canada side of the river.”
“I’ll ask,” said Rogers, his voice relaying his uncertainty.
Axel knew that the cult was unpopular among the Kowa people because of Reverend Wayne’s attempts to recruit from among members of their tribe, and the Mohawk people had resources Rogers just did not have. Specifically, they had watercrafts, all sorts, from fishing vessels to tour boats.
“I’m on my way out there now. See you in a few,” said Rogers and disconnected.
Axel’s car radio crackled to life. Border Patrol was requesting assistance for DHS officer Hockings and Jackson and reporting they were thirty minutes out.
“ETA in five,” he replied. He was driving too fast to text Rylee back. He’d just have to tell her when he saw her.
If you see her.
Gunfire. Rylee pinned at a marina he never even knew existed during all that time inside those walls. Why had no one ever mentioned a wharf and lobstering operation?
The answer seemed obvious. No one wanted them to know. He knew from the meals he’d had as a child that shellfish, usually crab, was often on the menu. What he hadn’t known was what else his father had carried across the St. Lawrence in their little private fleet.
He turned off his lights before reaching the compound. There was no road between Rylee’s location on the GPS and the road where he sat. He crept along the narrow country road, approaching the north-side wall of the compound, scanning the weeds to his right, and then he saw it: the obvious tracks of many vehicles and the crushed and broken grass on either side of a rutted road.
He lifted his radio and reported the location of the road. Then he released his rear door. He took only the time it required to toss out a traffic cone and light a flare. Then he was back in his SUV and rattling along the frozen ruts of the road. Temperatures were forecast to dip to the twenties tonight, frost warning in effect. It was a bad time to be in or near the water.
The glow from below the hill alerted him that he was nearing his destination. His heartbeat pounded with his racing blood and his jaw ached from clenching his teeth. He flicked off his headlights and crested the hill.
The beams from the halogen lights mounted on the roofs of the pickups below illuminated the area, making the wharf resemble a Friday night football field. He saw men on the wharf and jetty, all armed with rifles.
A second truck barreled over the hill behind him and he turned to see the familiar turquoise truck of Kurt Rogers. He stood in the headlight’s beam and waved. Rogers was beside him in a moment and out of his vehicle, moving well for a man well past sixty.
“Situation?” asked Rogers, settling beside him with his rifle at the ready.
“Unknown,” said Axel. He drew out his field glasses
and peered at the wharf.
“Who are they?” asked Rogers.
“Don’t you recognize that truck?” asked Axel.
Rogers scanned the wharf using the scope on his rifle.
“Looks like Hal Mondello brought his entire crew. Some on the jetty. Some surrounding that building.”
The head of the moonshiners was not visible, but Axel knew his truck on sight.
“All this time I thought it was the North Country Riders,” said Axel.
“Makes sense. Fishing vessels would make transport of liquor so much easier. Just meet up with another boat out there and load the crates from one to another,” said Rogers, as he continued to scan the area using his scope. “Where’s your gal?”
He wished she was his. “Likely inside the garage.”
“You best get down there, then,” said Rogers, still watching the men through his scope. “You got your gun?”
“Of course.”
“You aim to use it?” Rogers gave him a hard look.
“If I have to.” But he wondered if it were possible. To again use a gun and kill another man. To save Rylee? He hoped he wouldn’t.
“Well, now,” said Rogers. “Looks like they are transporting more than booze.”
Trace followed the direction of Rogers’s attention.
“Look on the jetty beside the yellow boat,” said his friend.
On the jetty, two men wrestled a small figure from one of the boats.
“That a woman?” asked Rogers.
The figure was diminutive, dressed in black and fighting for all she was worth against the man holding her.
“The one everyone has been looking for.”
“I thought the suspect was a Chinese man,” said Rogers.
“Can’t be a coincidence.”
“They have two choices now. Back the way they came or take the boats.” Rogers scanned the scene below.
Mondello’s men were all scrambling into one boat.
“Looks like they made their choice,” said Axel.
“You gonna let them leave?”
“Absolutely. I’m here for Rylee.”
“They’re taking that gal,” said Rogers, indicating the struggling woman. Two men lifted her between them so that her feet never touched the ground as they hustled her along.
“I’m going down there and finding Rylee.”
Axel left the trucks and his old friend, using the darkness to move closer through the underbrush that flanked the road.
Below, the men’s captive broke free and ran up the jetty. One man lifted his pistol and shot her in the back. The woman’s arms flew up. She staggered, her center of gravity now rolling forward, too far before her legs.
Axel ran through the brush as Rogers swore and started shooting. His friend’s aim was good, taking down the man who had shot the woman in the back.
The second man now swept his rifle wildly, moving to find the position of the unknown shooter. He ignored the woman crawling on the jetty, running for cover as Rogers’s second shot missed the man who leaped from the quay to the yellow-bottomed boat.
The men on the quay now had Rogers’s position and returned fire as Axel moved quickly down the hill. Rylee’s text had come from inside the garage, so that was his destination.
Behind him came the wail of sirens. Their approaching cacophony drowned out the shouts of the men below. Border Patrol had made good time.
The men below fired on Rogers, who had moved behind his truck. Their bullets punctured the front grate.
The men by the trucks now moved en masse toward the boats on the opposite side of the canal from the marina. Hal Mondello, past the age of running, paused by the woman, who had made it to her hands and knees. With a mighty shove from his boot, Mondello kicked the woman from the lip of the jetty and into the icy water of the canal.
A door banged open and he saw a familiar flash of blond hair as Rylee ran from the cover of the garage and across the open ground on the opposite side of the jetty. The men, now on the boats, lifted their rifles.
“No, no, no,” he chanted as he raced toward the canal. Above, Rogers’s shots sent the men ducking for cover.
“What’s she doing?” he muttered.
But he knew. Even before she jumped from the jetty, he knew.
Chapter Nineteen
Rylee had left Jackson behind her as she’d dashed out into the cold autumn wind. Jackson could not swim and their suspect, the key to the entire case, had been kicked into the water.
How deep was the water? How cold?
Feet first entry, she’d decided. To be on the safe side. Nothing worse than breaking your neck on a shallow bottom or a piling hidden beneath the inky surface. She saw them, the men scrambling into the boats, as she’d leaped out in one giant stride to nowhere. She’d recognized one of them.
Hal Mondello had stared back at her with a surprised expression as she’d sailed out over the canal. She’d looked from him to the black water before it swallowed her up.
A thousand needles of ice pierced her skin as she struggled with her sodden clothing and waterlogged boots to reach the surface. River water burned her eyes as she realized that this was not like swimming in a lake in July. This water was deadly.
The steel-toed boots and sodden clothing dragged her straight to the bottom. Panic shuddered over her as she fought the urge to gasp against the cold, knowing that one breath of water would be her last. She tipped her head to look back at the surface and saw only deep threatening darkness. The black of a watery tomb. The razor-sharp terror clawed at her, but she forced herself to crouch on the spongy bottom and release her boots. She could not quite feel the laces, double knotted, because of the numbness of her fingers. But one boot came loose and then the next. But now her lungs burned with the need for air.
Rylee tried to release the zipper of her coat, but failing that, she dragged the entire thing over her head and away. The efforts took her sweater with it. Planting her feet, she prepared to push off the bottom when something brushed her cheek.
The blurry image of a woman’s face sank before her, the outstretched, lifeless hand gliding over Rylee’s chest. Rylee caught the scream of horror in her throat, keeping the precious, nearly exhausted oxygen in her aching lungs. It was her target, the person of interest. Was she dead?
And would Rylee follow her?
She grasped the woman’s collar in one fist, locking her fingers around the fabric like the talons of an eagle. She exploded off the bottom with everything she had, kicking toward the surface she could not see. Now she felt the current, dragging her along and out, she realized, to the river.
Sound returned before the light. Gunfire and shouting. The knocking of the vessels against the floats beside the seawall. She couldn’t feel her feet or the woman she thought she held. Had she let go?
No time now. Just air, everything centered around that next breath. Now the blackness was punctuated with sparks of light. The surface approaching or her brain preparing to shut down?
She squeezed her eyes shut and kept kicking, willing herself to break the surface, to live, to see Axel Trace again so she could tell him what she should have said the morning he told her about Reverend Wayne. That Wayne wasn’t his father and that she was sorry his childhood was so terrible that he felt he needed to hide where he came from. She should have let him know that she didn’t care and that she forgave him for the lie because she loved him.
The water gave way to the night and Rylee gasped, inhaling a full breath of sweet cold air. She forgot to kick and just as quickly sank once more. This time she kept kicking, getting her face above and dragging the body of her target with her, struggling until the woman’s face broke the surface. Water streamed from the woman’s mouth, and she jerked and spasmed as Rylee continued to kick, just managing to keep them both above the surface in the current’s pull.
Greedy. That’s what the river was. The water making her choose. Take them both to the bottom or just Rylee’s prize. A glance to the quay showed they were sweeping out from the mouth of the canal and into the river.
One of the boats left the channel with her, powered by diesel and heading right for them. Rylee realized they meant to run her down. She imagined the propellers cutting into her flesh, shredding her muscle to hamburger.
Rylee stopped kicking and let the river take her again.
* * *
AXEL REACHED THE SEAWALL. The gunfire exchange now slowing as those on the vessel redirected their weapons to the river, searching for the woman who had been kicked into it and the one who had jumped in after her.
How cold was that water?
Deadly cold, he knew.
He could not see Rylee, but it was obvious that they could from the shots they unloaded into the river. Each discharge seemed to tear into him.
Mondello’s men were aboard the first vessel, now leaving its moorings, and the men from the congregation now drove back the way they had come, back to the compound, where there would be no escape from federal authorities.
A terrible thought struck him. They had an escape. The Rising. If Father Wayne told his followers that this was the night, how many would end their lives in the way they had so long rehearsed? Go to their bed, take the pills, wait for God to bring them to Heaven.
And remove any and all witnesses.
Terror lifted every hair on his body as he pictured them, and him in the years gone-by, dressing in their white robes, swallowing the placebo and lying on the cots in neat rows, like so much cordwood. The tranquilizers taking them quickly to unconsciousness but this time there would be no waking unless they really did wake at Heaven’s Door.
Suicide was against God’s will. He had learned this only after leaving—the murdering of one’s self was prohibited in the Bible.
Where was Rylee? The lobster boat moved out to deeper water, the men aboard staring back at him and the vehicles from Border Patrol, no longer seeing any of them as a threat. The distraction was why Axel did not see the fast-moving speedboats approaching behind them.
